


this isn't a road test

by bwyn, Yuisaki



Series: rings, dimes, and toys [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, one might say this is where Shit Gets Started
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 05:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12524356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuisaki/pseuds/Yuisaki
Summary: “That ain’t right,” says Lance as Keith finds the singular box of tomato sauce and cheese stuffed dough balls left in the convenience store. “You just skipped. Klondike. Klondike. For Pizza Po—”“Hot Pockets.”“For Pizza Pockets,” Lance says, horrified. “I love Pizza Pockets, but sweet Shiro, Keith, do you even have tastebuds? A soul?”Keith starts walking to the counter. “I have to say that I’m a little worried about the fact that for you, tastebuds are more of a priority than souls.”* * *In which Keith fixes things, and the TA trio witness just how far students are willing to go for midterms.





	this isn't a road test

**Author's Note:**

> bonjour it's bwyn again and THIS SURE IS LONG AIN'T IT. pls don't be afraid to holler if there's a typo 'cause like we've read through this way too many times and both my eyes are legitimately twitching from staring at a screen for too long SO.
> 
> also thanks everyone that left kudos and comments!! :'))) we really appreciate them and i know. I KNOW. THIS IS ONE LONG SHITPOST. GET READY FOR MORE.

It’s with a chest squeezed by apprehension that Lance trudges his way up to the garage at the top of the street. His brain is running through all possible interactions with Keith once he reaches the shop, ranging from Keith saying  _ ‘Oh, hey bud, here’s your car’  _ to _ ‘Hey you weird homosexual, take your business elsewhere, also I shit in your exhaust pipe.’  _ Naturally, Lance’s thoughts have been hovering moreso around the latter half of the scale. 

Instead of either of these, however, Lance arrives to Ezor dropping the keys in his hand and telling him his car is parked outside. He stares at her. Uncalled for, disappointment fizzles in his stomach.

“Unless,” she says, leaning over the desk to fix him with a shimmering turquoise-rimmed stare, “you want me to go fetch Keith from the back?”

_ No, I do not want you to fetch Keith from the back,  _ Lance wants to say. What comes out instead is, “Uh.”

Ezor jumps on his hesitation like a hyena on a week old antelope carcass. That is to say, voraciously.

Before Lance can flee, she’s swinging open the employees only door leading into the garage and shouting, “Keith! Your friend is here to see you!”

Lance, not for the first time, wonders how long it would take to pickaxe open an abyss for himself. And, naturally, Keith appears not five seconds later, blinking owlishly and with a smudge of grease down the bridge of his nose. Lance wonders if he does it on purpose. From the look Ezor is giving him, he wouldn’t be surprised if she strategically placed the smear there herself.

“Hey,” says Keith. He looks down at his hands as he tugs off his gloves, as if shy. Lance silently begs him to Not Do That. “Come to pick up your shitty rustbucket?”

Lance not so silently tells him to stuff it.

Keith snorts. “Well, good news is that all the duct tape is cleared from the engine. That pile in the corner over there—” he gestures to the far wall, where a… mass of unidentifiable black substances lie oozing on the counter “—so your engine shouldn’t get backed up or whatever. Sound should be cleaner too, and if I did everything right, starting up the car should be nice and smooth.”

Lance blinks. If he’s being honest he paid attention to around three words of that whole rundown, but three words are enough that he gets that the proper response should be, “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” Keith lifts Lance’s keys in the air. “Wanna test it out?”

Lance wiggles his hand in answer, and Keith tosses the keys at him. After observing the keys for a moment—not for any particular reason—he suddenly asks, “Wanna get in?” 

Keith blinks. Then Lance hastens to add, per Lance Espinosa fashion, “Because, ya know, if you rigged it to blow up in my face, I’m taking you with me.”

Keith’s face remains blank. 

Lance lowers his keys. “Ah… just kidding. Uh.” He scrambles to find the right words, and all that ends up coming out is a weak, “But the offer’s still up if you want it?”

Still nothing. Lance is on the verge of diving into the nearest burlap, soaking it in kerosene, and setting himself on fire, when Keith drops his gloves on the desktop and says, “Alright. We’ll see how it runs ‘round the block.”

“Oh, sweet,” says Lance, allowing way too much relief to saturate his voice. “I mean, if shit goes south, at least you’ll see it wasn’t my fault.”

“Don’t count on it,” Keith snorts. “My repairs are flawless.”

“Hm, remember that ti—”

“Not now, Ezor. Please.”

“I’m curious,” says Lance immediately. He looks at Ezor over Keith’s shoulder as he comes out from around the desk. “I need to know.”

“Nope, you don’t,” says Keith as Ezor opens her mouth, hooking his arm around Lance and dragging him bodily out the door. 

As soon as they’re clear, Keith drops his arm and spins around to firmly shut the door behind them. Lance cocks an eyebrow, absently patting at his own chest and drumming heartbeat, when Keith turns back to face him. 

“Dark secrets?” Lance prompts.

Keith narrows his eyes at him. “Get in the car.”

“What, it’s not like it’s th—stop looking at me like th— _ ow, ow, ow—OKAY— _ ”

As soon as Lance settles behind the wheel, he just knows he’s going to fuck up somehow. Like, _ drive over the curb and into a fire hydrant and smash a diamond sneakily disguised as a rock and make a generations-old taquito shop go broke because they have no funds without their rock-diamonds  _ kind of fuck up. The kind you don’t really recover from, and a year from now people are still calling you Bankrupting Blastoise. 

Lance doesn’t think he has the mental or social fortitude to survive that kind of flub. 

“So,” he says as the car rolls forward, half in an effort to distract himself from the all-encompassing thoughts from the dark abyss, half to break the awkward silence. Then he realizes he has nothing to say. “So. So, uh. Nice weather, huh.”

Keith casts a glance outside, where it’s an overcast sky with a humidity that’s high enough to burst dams, and a temperature to match, and looks back at him. “Are you kidding?”

“At least it’s not like,  _ hailing _ ,” Lance defends. “This is bad, but it’s not hail, you know?”

“You mean, at least it’s not rain.”

Lance sucks in a breath and slams on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the parking lot. 

Keith rights himself from the dashboard, looking incredulous. “Dude, what the f—”

“You did not,” Lance says, horrified. “You did not just imply you hated  _ rain _ . In Michigan. Michigan’s rains. Africa’s rains. Toto. That are blessed.  _ Rains _ .”

Keith blinks several times and then tips his head. “I… well, yeah. It’s rain. Also, what the fuck is Toto?”

Lance sucks in a deeper breath. “Oh my fucking Shiro. Here exists a man, a real man, who doesn’t know—Africa’s rains— _ rain _ —” Then he clasps his hands together and places his forehead on the steering wheel. “Oh, Her Gracious Omniscience, please give me the strength to educate this poor young man, who is unaware of the most basic of the songs needed to survive in our time, and for your blessings I will offer y—”

“Are you—are you praying for me?”

“No,” Lance corrects, eyes closed. “I’m praying for me and your lack of knowledge. And rain.”

“And rain,” repeats Keith. He shakes his head. “And rain.”

“And rain,” echoes Lance, again, for good measure. He inhales long and deep as he straightens in his seat and wraps his fingers tight around the wheel. “Okay, we can get through this. I can get through this.”

“Just... drive around the block.” Keith looks about ready to dive out of the car. “Please.”

Lance exhales so forcefully that the air whistles through his nose. “Right. I can do this.”

“This isn’t a road test.”

“Oh, it’s a  _ test _ alright.”

Despite his dramatics, Lance does, in fact, manage to make it around the block. Which only takes ten minutes when he somehow takes a wrong turn and ends up assdeep in one-way roads that he didn’t realize existed because, well, duct tape never gave him the leisure for browsing and he used to walk everywhere. Pedestrians don’t care about one-ways. This is mobilism, or something. Anyway, Keith bores a hole into the side of his head the entire time until Lance has a fine sheen of sweat gathering coolly at the back of his neck. 

“No wonder your car is breaking down,” says Keith the moment he’s clear of the Corolla. 

Lance splutters and leans over the center console to better address him. “Pardon? We made it, didn’t we?”

“Around the block?” 

“...Yes.”

“If your brake pads are wrecked,” says Keith, pointedly looking towards where Lance shifts his feet awkwardly, “not my problem.”

“You’re definitely not getting a tip from me.”

“Mechanics don’t get tips, Lance.”

“Well, you’re  _ especially _ not getting a tip.”

Keith shakes his head, but there’s a slight grin tugging at his mouth that Lance—for whatever reason—reads as a victory. Instead of shutting the passenger door, Keith’s hand remains gripping the frame for a moment longer. He leans down slightly, allowing Lance an improved view.

“Y’know, about the study thing,” he begins.

Lance is quick to wave him off. The embarrassment of the memory is still painfully fresh. “Don’t worry about it,” he says hastily. “We did the apologizing thing.”

“It’s not that.” Keith picks at the window’s rubber seal. “I just thought, if you still needed help. I could. Help, I mean.”

“Oh.” 

“If you need it, ‘cause you didn’t really look confident last time, and I know the concepts start getting a bit harder—”

“Yeah, man,” interrupts Lance, eyes wide. “That’d be grool. Great, I mean. Cool.”

He mentally kicks himself. Just throws himself to the ground of his imagination. Boots his figurative stomach until he feels even the slightest bit better that he’s a massive dork. Burlap, kerosene, flames, the whole shebang.

Then something happens: it rains in Africa, Her Forgiving Powerfulness smiles upon him, and he wins a bet in B-Mart. In other words, Keith—actually, legitimately, without malice or annoyance or pity—laughs at the whole deal. 

Then he grins and says back, “Grool.”

Then Lance’s chest does a thing. A Lance’s-shitty-car-kickstarting-and-wheezing sorta thing.

“Grool,” says Lance weakly. 

* * *

When Allura enters the Tree Rat Shrine, Shiro is gazing out the window with a dead expression and Matt is on the couch—or, well, half on the couch. His upper half is on the floor, arms spread wide and gaze fixed on one of the squirrels that stares down at him beady-eyed from the ceiling. Allura doesn’t really understand his obsession with squirrels (more of a mouse person, herself) but since Matt is nice and exudes the sun most of the time and is generally a fun person to be around—especially when he gets competitive during trivia—she’s willing to overlook the squirrel thing.

It’s actually because of trivia that she finds herself back in the shrine. One part because she wanted to invite both of them out for another round, three parts because a drunk Matt is a funny one, and she also wants to get to know what kind of person Matt’s best friend is.

She already knows Matt is eccentric (mumbling sweet nothings in Italian and German to the squirrels) but the only things she knows about Shiro is that he is aware of and fears her (rightfully so), has a brother that would pair beautifully with a Certain Person—aka Lance—in a photoshoot, and sometimes stares at Paizlee, the Sixtieth Squirrel, to consider what choices he made in his life brought him to this point. Paizlee’s pondering and reflective eyes especially make for some good introspection. Or that’s what she’s heard, anyway. 

So instead of greeting them with  _ hello’ _ s, Allura closes the door behind her and says, “Midterms, huh.”

Matt makes a sound like helium escaping from a balloon. Shiro closes his eyes and rasps, “Midterms.”

“How bad?” she asks, sitting in Matt’s chair that he never actually seems to use.

“Bad,” Shiro croaks.

Matt is still making that noise.

“I gave up,” says Allura cheerfully, “and stuck a note up on my door for the students and left.” 

“That takes some courage,” says Shiro as he looks back out the window, “especially when—” He goes silent. 

Curiously, Allura steps delicately over Matt to peek over Shiro’s head. They have a pretty decent view of the green.

A pretty decent view of a group of shirtless students chasing squirrels around campus with the school colors painted on their backs, at least. 

“Oh, dear,” says Allura.

Matt makes a slightly more inquisitive helium noise. 

“Is this a Narti quest?” Shiro asks tiredly. “Do they want the test answers? Is this why they’re chasing squirrels?”

Allura is suddenly reminded of the canary in a coal mine allusion, about the canaries who would stop singing if dangerous gases spread throughout the mines. The reason the thought occurs to her is because the helium noise behind them suddenly ceases, replaced by a quiet, but deadly,  _ “What.” _

“Oh, dear,” says Allura again.

“What did you say they’re doing? Squirrel catching? I don’t think I heard squirrel catching, did I? Students? Other than me? Doing the—the catching? Of the squirrels? A  _ Tamia– Tamiasciurus hudsonicus?” _

“Matt,” Shiro begins. 

Allura turns just in time to see Matt peel himself off Frederico and do a perfect somersault, except it doesn’t give the vibes of a veteran gymnast as much as it does a particularly enraged roly-poly oozing murderous intent. 

“Oh, dear,” says Allura for the third time.

The most horrifying part of it is that Matt doesn’t break eye contact with the window the whole time he does the somersault, from when he starts to roll backwards off Frederico, all the way to when he sits upright again and starts crawling towards the window. 

“They don’t even have the correct equipment,” says Matt slowly and calmly, advancing to the window. “They don’t know the methods. They don’t know how to do it without hurting the squirrels and frightening them and possibly shortening their precious lifespans, which I would  _ gladly  _ trade the lifespans of these students’ for, if it meant the squirrels could live longer. And they’re doing this.”

Five feet away from the window.

“For.”

Three feet.

“The damn.”

One foot. 

“ _ Tests.” _

Allura’s gaze slides to the window, where the students have stopped running around and are inching towards a defenseless squirrel on all sides. Beside her, Shiro sighs and opens the window before making tired eye contact once more with Paizlee, the Sixtieth Squirrel.

Matt throws himself out the window.

Or tries, because Shiro grabs him by the shirt prior to launch, so really Matt’s just stuck in mid-lunge position, arms flailing as if he might be able to furiously swim through the air, down to the green, and destroy the livelihoods of the students there.

He settles for yelling. “IF YOU DARE TOUCH ONE KERATINOUS FIBER ON THAT  _ SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS’ _ HEAD I WILL PERSONALLY SEE TO THE COMPLETE AND UTTER ANNIHILATION OF YOUR GPA—”

Allura still thinks Matt exudes the sun. A lot of fire. A star gone supernova. Quite endearing, if she’s being honest. 

The students scatter like fruit flies, while their peach—the squirrel, in fact  _ not  _ a  _ Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, _ as previously believed—flicks its tail and whisks up a tree. Shiro assists Matt returning to the confines of the actual building. 

“You okay?” asks Allura.

“Yes,” he heaves, and then backpedals to collapse onto Frederico’s lumpy cushions. 

Shiro closes the window and returns his gaze to Paizlee, the Sixtieth Squirrel. Allura decides that she can ask about trivia some other time.

* * *

Midterm week.

AKA Hell week. Although slightly less hellish than finals week. So more like purgatory week.

AKA start seriously considering purchasing burlap, kerosene, matches—or find a mob of angry literature students. The mob is easier to find.

One would think that suffering through two semesters would smarten up a man. First year is supposed to be the wake up call, right? The one where you sit down in your very first, very shiny introductory prerequisite courses and think,  _ Holy shit, my bio teacher in high school was being such a dick when she said college was harder,  _ and then not four weeks later you’re faced with your first exam and you realize that all that free time between classes? The entire time, it was in preparation for  _ this _ . 

Because sure, they say you should stay on top of your work and you’ll be working  _ nonstop _ and it’ll be  _ hell _ and you’ll never have time to enjoy yourself,  _ but remember to enjoy yourself because this is your youth _ . The thing that high school isn’t preparing you for isn’t the difficulty, or the work load—it’s the independence. That thing that they keep telling you that you need  _ more of _ and yet never tell you exactly how to get it. It’s not your first part time job, or your first car, or that club you go to after school.

It’s moving out of your family’s house and suddenly nobody is telling you what week, what day, what  _ hour _ you’re supposed to be writing this particular essay, this lab report, this review. You’re responsible for your own food, your own health, your own schedule. It’s all on you. Nobody else. 

Just you.

And you’re not prepared for it.

So one would  _ think _ that having gone through that jarring first year of sudden independence, someone like Lance Espinosa would be prepared for midterms. 

Except Keith finds him bouncing his head against the front desk of the library at 11:50 PM, the night before the exam he’s been stressing about since the beginning of the semester—since their very first and very awful study session.

And Keith, as awkward as the first time he saw Lance in this position, asks, “Uh, you okay?”

And, as dead as the first time Lance talked to him, says,  _ “Mmmrrghhr.” _   
  


“Do you… need help?”

“Not even Her Legitimate Modesty can save me now,” Lance moans. “The only way you can help me is by getting burlap, kerosene, match—”

“None of that,” Keith says, and pats his back haltingly. “Come on, get up. What subject?”

“Fucking  _ physics,”  _ Lance wheezes. “I hate it. So much.”

“Good for you that I’m an engineering major and I have free time,” Keith says. “Come on, up. When’s the exam?”

“Afternoon. You ca—  _ Wait.”  _ Lance shoots up and pins him with a desperate blue gaze. “You’re free? Right now? And have the mental energy to spare on some poor bastard like me?”

“Uh,” Keith says, blinking, “yeah. I told you I’d help you a few days ago, didn’t I?”

“ _ Oh, thank Shiro.  _ We’re gonna Shiro it up, and crank this, because I’m blessed in this house tonight. I am truly blessed.”

It still feels a little weird to hear his brother have become some sort of— _ entity  _ and verb at the same time, but whatever. “Speaking of which,” Keith says, “uh, Shiro’s my brother, too, so if there’s something I don’t know we can ask him.”   
  


Lance freezes. In a series of rickety motions, he turns his neck to face Keith. “I,” he whispers, mouth trembling, “I  _ love you _ , man.”

Heat floods Keith’s cheeks. “Don’t worry about it. Get out your things and let’s get to it. How much do you know?”

“Nothing,” says Lance as he heaves his bag up on the desk, where it lands with a solid  _ thunk.  _ “I don’t get it.”

Keith walks around the desk to pull up an empty chair beside him. “Be more specific. What don’t you understand?”

“I understand  _ none _ of this,” says Lance, spreading out his meticulously organized notes across the table. “Absolutely  _ none _ of it.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” Keith taps his fingertip against the one of the pages. “All this? If you didn’t get it, you wouldn’t have been able to simplify it with this drawing. Yet there it is.”

Lance’s jaw starts to jut out. “Okay, so my subconscious inner artist is getting it, and leaving me out to dry.”

“It’s not that hard, man—”

“For  _ you _ ,” snaps Lance, harsh voice cutting through Keith’s retort. “You have to take physics for your degree, you should be at least decent at it. I’m a journalism major! This isn’t my thing!”

Keith grits his jaw and wills himself not to say something stupid. It’s difficult, but he sees the way Lance scowls at his notes with equal parts guilt and frustration. So instead of blowing up, he inhales, even repeats pieces of Shiro’s obnoxious but well-meaning mantras for patience, and tries again.

“Then we’ll make it your thing,” says Keith slowly. “There’s  _ some _ way we’ll make it easier for you to study. Maybe it just isn’t gel pen.”

“I  _ like _ my gel pen,” mumbles Lance.

“Let’s just… put it aside for now.” Keith flips open his binder—a battered thing from ninth grade held together by green and blue alien stickers—and withdraws several stapled booklets. “Instead of memorizing everything, let’s try practicing.”

“Dude. I don’t  _ get _ the concepts.”

“Not yet,” says Keith, willing as much reassurance into his voice as possible, “but that’s because you haven’t gotten enough practice. We’re just going to—to wing it.”

“Wing it,” repeats Lance flatly.

Keith quirks a grin and slaps the booklets out in front of him. “My exams from last year. When I took the same course.”

He watches Lance’s eyes bulge. “Holy  _ shit,” _ he whispers reverently, hands hovering above them and yet not daring to touch. “The things people have done for these.”

“These are cheap compared to the upper year courses.” When it’s obvious Lance is willing to spend the rest of the night ogling and not studying, Keith reaches out to flip open the booklet, filled with his own chicken scratch. “Write out the question yourself, use my work as a crutch if you have to. Then we’ll see if the rest of the class notes make sense after putting it to use.”

“Your handwriting is shit,” says Lance, but Keith can already tell when he’s actually being a dick, and when he’s being… something else. Acquaintance? Nah, too cold. Yet Keith can’t tell whether friend is the right word either, and he’s not  _ quite _ awkward enough to ask “Just what are we?” while alone in the library.

“Sorry it’s no Mona Lisa,” retorts Keith, and he’s rewarded with a pleased laugh.

“Well,” Lance says, grinning down at the walls of formulae, “at least it’s… sort of… legible.”

“Hey, if Thace marked it, it can’t be  _ that _ bad.”

“Maybe he’s got glasses that let him see into the alternate dimension where your writing is  _ neat _ .”

“Just start working, you asshole.”

Mocking Keith’s voice under his breath in the same way that insulting his handwriting didn’t really feel like an insult, Lance hunches over the physics exams with—despite Keith’s advice—glittery gel pen in hand. 

“Gel pen,” Keith says. “Doesn’t that hurt your eyes?”

“No,” says Lance, scribbling away. “The color of the actual pen helps me focus.”

“You mean… the color of the ink?”

Lance lifts the pen and taps at the shell of the pen. “No, this thing,” he says. Keith squints. The pen itself is a sort of grey-ish, green-ish color, which confuses Keith the longer he looks at it, because the fluff thing on the end is… bright blue, and the pen writes in blue. Not grey. Also, he’s pretty sure that blue-fluff pen was purple the last time he saw it. “It’s Knoxville grey. Trending color of the year.”   
  


“Ah,” says Keith, and makes a mental note to google what the fuck a trending color is. “Knoxville.”

“Yeah,” Lance says. “Also, shut up for two seconds, I think I’ve sorta kinda maybe perhaps got this problem.”

Keith snorts and leans back. “Alright, then. Go for it.”

Three minutes of squinting, groaning, head banging, and adamant refusals of help later, Lance throws his pen down on the desk and wheezes. “Okay,” he heaves out. “I think I got it. Check it for me.”

“The answers are  _ right there, _ ” Keith says, but takes the notebook anyway. He notes the clean and sharp handwriting, doesn’t think about how Lance wrote this cleanly while scribbling, and scans the page. Then he frowns. Everything's right, except— 

“Here,” Keith says, pointing, and Lance groans and sets the legs of his chair back on the ground to look. “Over here, you wrote twenty-one all the way down, but at the end you plugged in twelve instead and got five.”

“Oh, fuck me,” says Lance. “Shit. Hold on. Let me redo that.”

Keith huffs a laugh. “It’s not a big mistake, you know. Just check your wo—”

“ _ Shut up I’m thinking.” _

Keith raises his hands in surrender and quiets down.

After a few seconds, Lance lets out a triumphant yell. “Negative three! Negative three! Tell me it’s negative three or I’m going to fucking choke myself on Pizza Pockets. Negative three, right?”

“Bingo,” says Keith. “Congrats. So you get the basic equation. And there’s only three other equations that you need to get the hang of, and then you’re solid on the unit.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s… surprising.”

“I know. And then they start trying to trick you with questions that  _ look _ like they want this equation, but they want  _ this _ one instead, and then others where you just stick in cosine and—okay, don’t freak out.”

Lance stares at him with the most disgusted expression Keith has ever seen, which is saying a lot since he’s best friends with Pidge. 

“Don’t freak out, he says,” Lance mutters, while staring straight at Keith. “Just wing it, he says. Physics is the easiest thing in the world, he says.”

“I definitely do  _ not _ recall saying that,” Keith snorts. “Focus, Lance. You got through this, you can get through the rest.”

Lance huffs, but he hunches back over the papers and scribbles away. When he gets through the next problem with a similar issue with the first, Lance seems to find momentum. He’s beginning to spot where to catch his own errors, what to look for when checking his work, and Keith finds himself—attempting to—interrupt less and less. He’s definitely not an A student, but Keith feels confident Lance could make it, if he wanted to. A couple more study sessions maybe. 

The blue tuft of the gel pen brushes against Lance’s nose, inducing the tiniest of sneezes.

Or a few more study sessions. Several. A bunch.

Keith doesn’t know how long it takes them to chip through the rest of the concepts that Keith expects Thace to toss into the midterm, but it’s  _ awhile _ . Long enough that his eyes are starting to bob shut and Lance nearly impales himself on his pen several times. 

Yet Lance keeps at it, adopting a sort of obstinance that he only really witnessed during the Steven incident. No matter how many times Lance’s eyelids try to fall, he shakes himself, rams pen to paper, and scowls all the while working through physics questions that had him bashing his head against the desk a couple hours before.

And Keith is kind of… proud.

Then he catches himself. Is pride a thing you feel for not-quite-strangers-but-not-quite-friends? Is that an acceptable emotion?

“Hey,” Keith says, the word breaking from a yawn, “hey, uh, are we friends?”

Lance freezes, pen to paper, intense scowl still glued to his face. Then, in a series of rather halting movements—scowl erased, pen down, head lifting—Lance looks up to meet Keith’s gaze and says, “Uh. Yeah? I think. Are we?”

“That’s what I was asking you,” says Keith, and gestures vaguely between them. “Like, uh. We’ve known each other for like, three weeks, and then two of those were spent being mad, and then there was two days ago and then today that we had decent conversations, so like…”

“I’d think,” says Lance, “I mean, if you stick with someone for”—he checks his phone and gapes—”for  _ three  _ hours up to three in the morning, that’s like… that’s pretty friendship-y. I think. I’m tired.”

“Me too.”

“Well, I guess unless we wake up the next morning and decide we suddenly fucking hate each other for no reason,” Lance says, tapping his pen on his lip thoughtfully, “then we’re friends. True bonding is studying for three hours until the asscrack of the night. Dawn. Whatever.”

“Wonderful. Right, just wanted to know. Back to work.”

Lance narrows his eyes and hisses. “I take it back. I can’t be friends with a workaholic.”

“You literally have  _ two problems left—” _

“Workaholic,” Lance says again. “This is gonna drive me into an early grave.”

“Okay,” says Keith. “How about this. You finish your two problems and we go… somewhere. Like a—a food somewhere.”

“A food somewhere,” Lance repeats. A mournful expression crosses over his face. “But Chipotle’s is closed.”

“7/11 isn’t,” Keith says. “Hot Pockets.”

“Pizza Pockets.”

“We’ll get both,” Keith decides. “And like, fuckin’ ice cream or something.”

“Deal,” says Lance, and puts the pen to the page. “Let’s roll.”

* * *

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yeah, I’ve walked there plenty of times.”

“Okay, so why are we on the other side of downtown?”

“Um.”

“The 7/11 was literally  _ a block away _ .”

“Okay,” says Lance, gesturing way too wildly for someone who’s supposed to be driving, but currently Lance can’t give a flying fuckeroni because—okay backtracking on the fuckeroni and shortening to fuck because that was embarrassing— _ because _ it’s three in the morning, his brain is mush, and Shiny New Friend Keith is beside him. “So I missed a few turns. People can make mista—”

“You missed a turn,” Keith says, staring at him with the gaze of a dead fish on a platter. “And then you missed another. And then you kept missing them. Now we’re downtown.”

“...Yeah,” says Lance grudgingly. “That’s not… wrong.”   
  


“You need a GPS.”

“I’m  _ fine—” _

“You do the exact opposite of everything you’re supposed to.”

Lance grimaces at the windshield as he makes a U-turn and tries not to make it look like he’s got his metaphorical tail between his legs. “We’ll get there eventually.”

“You might,” mutters Keith. “I might make an early exit out the window.”

“No, wait, look!” Lance points excitedly ahead of them, causing his car to drift across lanes. “Whoops. Uh, there it is!”

“I can’t believe you turned a five minute car ride into a twenty minute one.” Keith smiles at him. Still looks like a dead fish. “Phenomenal.”

“Hey. Hey Keith. Take your sarcasm and shove it up your ass. We’re here.”

Somehow. Lance isn’t going to linger on the how’s or where’s or why’s of his driving, but rather that in the end, he gets to his destination. In this case, it’s a 7/11 that looks clean but everyone knows is shitty and dilapidated by definition, so therefore is really just a mockery of sanitation.

“Finally,” says Lance, parking the car. “Store sweet store.” 

Keith blinks at him.

He feels the need to explain himself. “You know,” Lance tries, “like, home sweet home? Except this isn’t a home. It’s a store, so, uh—”

“Store sweet store,” Keith says, snorting, and shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go in. Time for some ice cream and Hot Pockets.”   
  


“Pizza Pock—”

“ _ Not now.” _

Mumbling and grumbling as any mature adult would do, Lance allows the subject to drop when they exit the car to enter the interdimensional space that is the 7/11. The freezer whispers sultry things as soon as Lance’s foot clears the threshold. Sweet, overpriced treats. How conniving. How daring.

Lance doesn’t realize he’s got his face three inches from the surface of the freezer until Keith gives him a sharp poke in the shoulder.

“Pretend, for a minute, that you’re normal,” says Keith.

“Okay but consider this,” retorts Lance, although he does straighten. “The concept of normalcy is abandoned the moment you: one, step into a 7/11, and two, consider the choices laid out before you. Reese’s ice cream sandwiches, or the classic Itzakadoozie, or, if you’re feeling particularly rich, a Drumstick? You have these options and you dare tell me that any behaviour aside from excessive salivating is preferred?”

Keith opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “Yes.”

“Weak,” declares Lance, shoving aside the door and reaching in to grab a Klondike bar. “I’m disappointed in you, Keith.”

“Less judging, more hunting.”

“This is more like gathering, y’know, no flailing limbs and baleful cries.”

Keith’s expression twists oddly, as if he doesn’t know exactly how to work his muscles. Which, frankly, doesn’t make a lot of sense since he’s been hanging around Pidge for who knows how long. Despite Lance not knowing either of them very well, he’s heard stories from Hunk. Many stories. Enough to fill in the blanks when it comes to—okay so maybe not but Lance has an image of their friendship, and what it comes down to is that Pidge is frightening and Keith is weak.

Especially when it comes to Hot Pockets. 

“That ain’t right,” says Lance as Keith finds the singular box of tomato sauce and cheese stuffed dough balls left in the convenience store. “You just  _ skipped.  _ Klondike.  _ Klondike.  _ For Pizza Po—”

“Hot Pockets.”

“For  _ Pizza Pockets, _ ” Lance says, horrified. “I love Pizza Pockets, but sweet  _ Shiro,  _ Keith, do you even have tastebuds? A soul?”

Keith starts walking to the counter. “I have to say that I’m a little worried about the fact that for you, tastebuds are more of a priority than souls.”

Lance trails after him, clutching his single Klondike bar that will lead him, like a creamy flashlight, out of the abyss that Keith is attempting to hurl themselves in. “Have you not had a Klondike bar? Is this why you’re acting out like this?”

“If I said no, would you run and grab me one?”

“Oh my Shiro,” says Lance, horrified all over again, and sprints to the ice cream section to snatch a Klondike. He returns to Keith wheezing, as Keith is in the midst of checking out.

Keith raises an eyebrow. Lance shoves the bar at his face. Slowly and wordlessly, Keith takes the bar and slides it over to the cashier. 

_ Beep.  _

Lance sags in relief. A soul has been saved tonight. Thank Shiro.

As soon as all food products have been purchased, Lance ushers Keith outside and to the car. Keith goes to open the door. It doesn’t budge. He slowly looks across the Corolla’s roof at Lance, who raises his eyebrows from the opposite side.

“Klondike,” says Lance.

The box of choice pockets is left to rest on top of the car. Lance folds his arms on the roof and tucks his chin on top, eyes as wide and baleful as they’ll go. The wrapper slides free from a corner of the ice cream bar. Lance feels his own bar between his fingers, waiting for that moment of delicious martyrdom.

Keith lifts the treat to his mouth; Lance holds his breath. 

He bites. Chews. Looks ready to write it off and Lance is ready to  _ fight _ him, but then Keith pauses. By the time Keith can tear his awed gaze away from the Klondike, Lance is already bobbing his head victoriously.

“I  _ told _ you,” crows Lance. “Tell me. Tell me how great it is.”

“Well.” Keith’s lips purse, twitch, and then he’s taking another bite. “...Good.”

“ _ Hah!” _ Lance finally unlocks the door and they duck inside. “Never again question me, my opinions are always right, okay? Lance is always right. Say it with me.  _ Lancey Lance is always right _ .”

“I’m not saying that,” says Keith as Lance backs up the car, and yet he’s cradling the Klondike bar with the same kind of reverence that universal consumers of said frozen treat all exude.

“Just knowing you’re thinking it is enough,” sniffs Lance as he turns the car around and drives out onto the street.

They’re halfway down the road, Lance is using his teeth to open up his own ice cream bar and Keith is savoring his, when there’s an odd sound like something sliding across the roof. Lance automatically slams on the brakes. 

A moment later, both Lance and Keith straighten in their seats.

“Lance,” breathes Keith. “What the  _ fuck?” _

Ice cream plasters the dash. Lance swallows. “Remember your, uh, Hot Pockets?”

“Yeah, I—” Keith cuts off. 

Ahead of them, the road is a crime scene of scattered, frozen pucks of dough. 

For a solid, painful thirty-four seconds, there is nothing but the sound of Keith’s breathing. 

“I’m sorry,” Lance says finally. Keith is still saying nothing. “I don’t know how to console you in your time of loss.”

He didn’t think it was possible, but when Lance chances a glance at Keith, his eyes have moved on from ‘ _ dead fish as the world is ending _ ’ expression straight into the ‘ _ Chipotle’s is closed, I’m out of Macklemore Dollars, the most benign squirrels in the Tree Rat Shrine like Uriel, Tavish, and Monserrat have refused to hear my pleas, and even Her Reliable Eminence is nowhere to be found _ ’ face. 

“I’m sorry,” Lance says again. “I am truly so, so sorry.”

“Just,” says Keith, in the most broken voice he has ever heard from Keith, or any being ever, “drive. Just drive.”

Lance drives.

**Author's Note:**

> for y'all wondering what the difference between [hot pockets](https://www.google.ca/search?safe=off&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=652&ei=yZXzWcCPCOvgjwS22I7QBg&q=hot+pockets&oq=hot+pockets&gs_l=img.3..0l10.256.1142.0.1254.12.9.0.0.0.0.107.393.2j2.4.0....0...1.1.64.img..8.4.391.0...0.eSPl3_6_-sc) and [pizza pockets](https://www.google.ca/search?safe=off&biw=1280&bih=652&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=y5XzWaKDD8HdjwTAybugDQ&q=mccains+pizza+pockets&oq=mccains+pizza+pockets&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i10k1.6567.8978.0.9074.23.13.1.0.0.0.321.1205.3j2j0j2.7.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..15.8.1205...0j0i67k1j0i8i30k1.0.eb7Fn9I83vw) are c:
> 
> also naming squirrels is difficult pls give us some ideas. also more titles for Her Unnamed Benevolence bcos im sure we've used benevolence like twice already
> 
> [my tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com) n [yui's](http://yuisaki-drabbles.tumblr.com)


End file.
